How did you get your start in poker?

[Gamblor]

As in, at what point did poker move past "follow the bitch" and "Anaconda" for $10 in your buddy's house in college? At what point did you say "I'm gonna really learn this game" and make it a serious hobby/living?

I'll go first.

In my first year of university, I bumped into some old friends from elementary school that I hadn't seen in a few years due to living abroad. we hung out a few times, and eventually they extended an invitation to their poker game. $20 buyin, maybe two people at most had to rebuy all night. it had all the classics, follow the bitch, kings and little ones, pregnant 3s, black chicago, and in-between, with the odd hold 'em or seven stud game thrown in. WIthin 2 hrs, the table had chopped up my $20.

Now, $20 wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough to piss me off. so i went online and searched pretty much everything i could think of related to poker. "poker strategy", etc. etc. hours spent memorizing abdul-jalib's preflop strategy (of course, not understanding that full ring limit hold em was slightly different than no limit shorthanded hold em) i watched a downloaded rounders every day for a week, often as my last activity before bed. i downloaded ultimatebet and began playing hold em for play money.

Then the real fun begins. I found 2+2 in early '03 and made my first post asking for any information on any freeroll tournaments online. i had been playing planet poker, pokerstars, and ultimatebet freerolls without any success. one fateful day in september, i won $10 in one of stars' freerolls.

then the penny games. quarter games. dollar games. get neteller. switch to UB. play 2/4. 3/6. nice run.

Then the collapse. with a $400 bankroll, and stars in my eyes, i jumped into a 10/20 game with Thanatos and two others. one hand i recall, i raised first in on the button with 53o to steal the blinds (having never even heard the term "steal the blinds" or ever read anything outside of abdul's stuff). the BB 3-bets and I decide it would be brilliant to set up a resteal on the flop or turn and cap it. flop: 553. nice. BB went on a tirade. By nights end, I had $1200 in the account and was dreaming of ways to spend my $800/day income.

by 7pm the next night, it was gone. 3 months and a neteller deposit for $50 later, i was on party at the 1/2 tables, grinding it out. i mean, i can't beat ub. must be the software. reading 2+2 daily. buying more books. and so it begins. first stop: amazon. order hpfap, hep, top, and championship p/nl hold em (cloutier). read. read. some more reading.

In 2 years since then, I've built a five figure bankroll online and about the same amount at live play in ontario casinos, and added at least that much to my bank account as well. my friends call me and ask for advice about poker. i have uncovered a network of underground "private" tournaments and cash games around Toronto. I've made friends with great people, here and in real life. i go out to a bar and don't save every receipt like i used to.

but most importantly, i win now. i'm good at it. maybe not the best, maybe not world-class, but I'm a winner. and it's going to pay for law school next year.

What's your story?

[MarkL444]

Last Feb I was bored one night and put $100 in party (without even getting a rakeback deal! DOH!). I was probably not even good enough at the time to beat the .50/1. (of course i did not know this) I played any limit that I have 25BBs for. Starting at 1/2, I was playing 15/30 in a few weeks. Built my roll up to around 3k. Needless to say my luck caught up with me and I lost nearly all of it. I was convinced that I was losing due to bad beats and such and that I was still really good. I bought some books and started getting better. It wasnt till a few months later that I realized how terrible I was then and the almighty power of variance. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[DcifrThs]

back in May 2002 or so i am ashamed to say it was rounders...i was wondering how likely it was that the hand vs. kgb went as it did. being a statistitian i found it interesting...i simply googled poker odds and i can't even remember the sight that came up but eventually i found Brian Alspach's poker digest...mathematical approach to poker using a 3rd person thing and discussions with friends to frame the problems...

then i found 2+2 and ordered books before ever playing a hand...i read every single old archive post at work (exciting job) from august 1996 (or 1997) all the way through the end of those older archives, i remember registering before the switch and then again after...archive logistics were changed, but still same content. i started looking at posted hands and was able to piece a lot of it together...i never looked at small stakes, only mid-high...then i started posting and took a very technical mathematical approach to the game as the older posters here may recall...

then came the party, poker. i gave myself 2k to learn the game and came within $50 of busting but i kept at it...learning folding and raising etc...

built that last 50 up as quickly as i lost the first 1950 to over 3k (moved to 2/4 w/ 1000, then played 3/6 with 1800) and moved to 5/10. i found the game made more and more sense and moved up with only 6k to 15/30 ... i won a whole lot very quickly and then lost a whole lot back down to 4k...that was very very depressing...

it was also during this time that i had to continually manually update this spreadsheet i derived from Mason's old spreadsheet to log my sessions and calculate bb/hr.

i gradually learned more and more strategy and started really killing the party games...

then i cleared my bankroll for school and started all over again in early december 2004.

bought into a live nl game with friends with $20...we were messin around all drunk, & i left w/ 200. deposited that on party and played 1/2. killed that game for a while and then played paradise 3/6 heads up and fed off of some insane fish and built my br up and up (paradise allows like 6 or 8 bets heads up as opposed to 4 and one guy went through an entire $1000 just raising every chance he got). i then went to AC, played 20/40 with 3k in my poket and 6k in the roll. after 2 sessions during christmas break i was up to 9k and deposited 2k on party...haven't looked back since [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

now i play the 30 games on party, & occasionally stars & ub for a change up as well as the 15/30, obviously, on our favorite site.

thats the whole story up until now. note that i was usually underbankrolled and if i could do it again i'd play lower limits longer...i could easily have busted myself! i really literally did get very very lucky.

-Barron

[CCass]

When I was in HS (20+ years ago), I was betting $25 a game on football, and playing golf for money all weekend. Cards naturally followed. Played at the Country Club and at the local Pool Hall. Played a lot of Tonk, and a fair amount of poker, mostly 8 card stud hi/lo declare. Looking back on it, the men I played with were always very accomodating to the young punk, because I imagine I fed the game well.

Continued playing various home games during college, and had a regular game for 3 or 4 years after. I hadn't played in several years, when I made my 1st visit to Vegas (summer of '99). Found the poker room and was in heaven. Played HE and Omaha, probably had a flops seen % in the high 80's...lol. So on my next trip to Tunica (much closer than Vegas), I didn't play my customary BJ, I only played HE. I only get to Tunica 1 or 2 times a year, and those infrequent visits weren't feeding my new found "jones". I heard about Moneymaker winning his seat off the interent in '03, and in the fall of '03 I could stand it no more.

Deposited $50 in Stars, lost it in a matter of days. Decided I needed to find out more about poker stategy, found 2+2 and went at Stars again. Deposited a total of $300 (in $50 increments) over the next couple of months, but HPFEP, TOP, and constant reading on 2+2 finally began to sink in. I haven't won a great deal of money, but I am on the plus side, and I still consider myself a recreational player. I am now very comfortable online in the $.50/$1 and $1/$2 NL games, and $3/$6 limit is fine as well. Additionally, the last 2 times I have been to a B&M casino, I have played $10/$20 LHE, and have no qualms about those limits. In fact, while at Tunica during the WPO, I played at a $10/$20 table where I was most likely the best player there. Not a ringing endorsement of the other 9 players at the table.

My goal is to continue to improve my play, grow my bankroll, and have fun. I am also planning an annual trip to Vegas, starting this summer.

[Diplomat]

Very well, where should I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. A sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. If I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fifteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shawn scrotum. At the age of eighteen, I went off to evil medical school. From there...

Oh wait, you mean poker. I'll write something about that later...

-Diplomat

[stabn]

Nicely done, good quote.

[stinkypete]

i lost something like $190 bucks to my older brother playing triple draw when i was 11-12 or so. it was no limit, and it wasn't table stakes. that was a lot of money. my royal flush of hearts lost to his royal flush of spades. (yeah, i know). i'm pretty sure wild cards were involved.

i discovered online poker april of 2004. i lost a couple grand in a month or two. i got into casino bonus whoring and made my losses back, and a few grand on top of that. i was playing 5/10 at casinos once in a while, and i was convinced i was a winning player, but i was probably somewhere a slight loser. (i'd read phil hellmuth's book, so i knew my stuff!)

i read some 2+2 books and bought poker tracker in september, and deposited $400 to play $0.5/1. i'd been playing significantly higher than that before. poker tracker quickly told me i was way too loose preflop, and i started winning pretty much immediately.

i played relatively regularly at ontario casinos thereafter, and did very well. i ran bad online and stopped playing for a while, but in december i took a shot at the 5/10 SH, won $2200 on my first day, and started playing the game regularly. i've been averaging 5 figures per month since, despite not having much time to play.

in other words, i'm a total luck box.

[Boltsfan1992]

Hiya -

I played bad draw poker in high school, played for pennies, it was fun and we looked cool.

Then, college came and there was NO ONE who would play. Instead, spades was the game, sometimes hearts, no gambling with money. So I forgot about poker for a long while.

Then, I had to take a certification test for my job. I had to go out of town and stay over night since the test was early in the morning. The bar where I had dinner that night had the 2003 WSOP on television. I said, "Poker on ESPN?! This isn't a sport!" I tried to get the bartender to change it but no luck. Then I saw Moneymaker interviewed by Letterman. When ESPN re-ran the WSOP, I watched every episode - I was hooked, what a cool game!

Then, I caught episodes of the WPT. A colleague at work watched it too and wanted to organize a home NL game, for fun. We did that for awhile but it wasn't enough.

I played play money on Party Poker and figured out quickly that I wasn't learning anything. People were fearless because there was no risk. I picked up Hold 'Em Poker at the book store and I was confused by the play money tables. I deposited $150 at Party Poker and started playing $.50/$1. I got lucky and won some.

Then, around November, I knew I was underbankrolled and wanted to take this more seriously. I deposited another $150 (bankroll was $300 +, just about breaking even). I picked up SSHE, and read that as well as TOP. I started applying what I learned and started to get better. I won enough to purchase Pokertracker and I saw what I was doing wrong/right while re-reading sections of the books and found this place.

Now, I haven't had to make a deposit since November. I did have a downswing in December, but having that 300BB "rule/guideline" helped a great deal. Now, I am playing $1/$2, ready to jump to $2/$4 and take a shot there. I have since added one table (oooohhhh....ahhhh...two tables at once, I am DA BOMB! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]) and still learning and improving.

That's my story...So I guess I can blame Moneymaker?

PB

[Turning Stone Pro]

My grandmother taught me how to play poker when I was 4. We used to play for pennies, 5 card draw, and I could never beat her. 31 years later, I probably still couldn't.

TSP

[lighterjobs]

[ QUOTE ]
Nicely done, good quote.

[/ QUOTE ]

where was that from? royal tennenbaums?